When a young friend saw a photo of a 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk on the wall near my desk, she asked if that was the car Abraham Lincoln used to drive.

She was kidding, of course. She knows that driver’s licenses weren’t being issued in the mid-19th Century. But as far as she’s concerned, the car I so admire belongs in the same dustbin of history as the Civil War and, for that matter, most anything that occurred before, say Lady Gaga and Justin Whatisname.

Is she wrong to think I’m so traumatized by modern times that I need to hide in “fuddyduddydom” by clinging to reminders of my youth?